Remains of the Wave

Today we bring you new music from the simply (and accurately) named, Katy & Nick. Katy being Katy Cotterell of Gloss Rejection and Nick Carlisle of Bamboo.

They only have two songs on the internet and both trade in haunting synth wave. This, though, is a very British synth wave. A punk-y, abrasive synth wave, not the icy distance of some of the finest continental practitioners. This is the ennui of a damp bedsit in a bad Victorian conversion, not the existentialism of a brutalist estate.

That Man is Back is the banger. It’s something you expect to find on a dusty Rough Trade 7″ — where you subsequently find out it actually sold 50,000 copies and didn’t even make the top 40, because the 80s. That sort of thing.

There’s a little bit of YMO to the hyper-simple melody that loops throughout the whole thing. An appropriately simple counterpoint the arpeggiated synth line that threads its way through Italo and Hi NRG. But above all that surges Correrell’s voice: echoing, forceful. Seemingly at times to do her own internal call and response. Almost screaming; shaky at times in the controlled way that punk nails.